


come morning light

by imagines



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, angsty fluff, set near the start of s1, subtle crushing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines
Summary: Keith rescues Shiro, and still the dreams don’t stop. In the middle of the night, Keith will jolt awake, grasping at apparitions. Just like he did every night before he got Shiro back.In the shack, he forces himself to stay in bed—contorting himself into increasingly uncomfortable positions, until his pillow is too warm and his sheets are knotted around his thighs.It’s over now, he’ll remind himself.Shiro’s fast asleep in the other room, safe and sound.But what if it was a dream?will come the next thought.It always was before.





	come morning light

Keith rescues Shiro, and still the dreams don’t stop. In the middle of the night, Keith will jolt awake, grasping at apparitions. Just like he did every night before he got Shiro back.

In the shack, he forces himself to stay in bed—contorting himself into increasingly uncomfortable positions, until his pillow is too warm and his sheets are knotted around his thighs. _It’s over now_ , he’ll remind himself. _Shiro’s fast asleep in the other room, safe and sound._

_But what if it was a dream?_ will come the next thought. _It always was before._

One night in the castle, he gives in, stealing down the hall in the golden-white glow of dimmed lights. He’s not going to wake Shiro up, he just needs to push the door open a crack, peek in, see that everything’s as it should be—

But the moment Keith pokes his head in, Shiro sits half-upright, staring at him. Figures he’d be a light sleeper.

“Keith? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m sorry, I just—” Keith’s trapped between the stupid, childish truth and an obvious lie. There’s no way he’s gonna admit he got scared and came running for comfort. There’s no way he can cover up why he’s here.

Shiro must read all of it as easily as if it’s tattooed on his skin. “Come here,” he says, in the same voice Keith dreamed of for months. The voice that had begun to fade from waking memory, no matter how he clung to it.

The words implore rather than command, but it makes it easier to walk the short distance from the door to the bed. He stands before Shiro as if he’s been granted audience by a drowsy king, staring at his own bare feet rather than Shiro’s face. Right now, meeting Shiro’s eyes feels like spilling secrets Keith isn’t ready to tell.

Shiro pulls back the corner of the blanket and pats the mattress, a silent repetition of his plea. Keith would do anything he asked—why should this be so difficult?

He folds himself into an awkward perch on the edge of the bed, hunched forward and staring into the darkness.

Shiro touches the back of his wrist. “Couldn’t sleep?”

_Shiro’s voice echoing all around him, warped and frayed and not at all like reality. Shiro falling and falling while Keith reaches endlessly. Shiro holding him close, squeezing him tight, too tight, until he can’t breathe, and suddenly there’s glowing purple light and it’s not Shiro, it’s some faceless Galra_ … “Something like that.”

“It’s hard for me to sleep too. After everything.”

“At least you have a reason. I just—missed you.”

“That’s a reason.” Shiro eases closer to the wall. “You should get some rest. There’s room.”

_I’d follow you anywhere_ _you wanted._ Keith allows himself to fall sideways, and Shiro flicks the blanket over him.

He leaves his right arm draped over Keith’s waist. It’s sort of like a hug, and being hugged by Shiro isn’t weird, it’s just that they’re in Shiro’s bed and it’s dark and they’re alone, and Keith can feel Shiro’s breath on the back of his neck. The rhythm is even and steady, nothing like the way the oxygen is stumbling in and out of Keith’s lungs. This is all wrong, not the touch itself, but—

“You all right?” Shiro’s arm tightens around him, and Keith is suffocating.

“I should be comforting _you_.” He doesn’t mean to snarl, but that’s hotheaded Keith for you, right? “Worse happened to _you_.”

“It’s okay,” Shiro says. “I’ve got you, Keith.”

"I should be the one who's got you!"

"We've got each other now."

Keith can’t think of a retort for that, so he shuts up and lets Shiro hold onto him; squeezes his eyes closed and waits for the nightmares to swallow him again. In the morning he wakes early and sneaks back to his room, realizing only after he curls up in his own bed that with Shiro, there were none.

 

Keith does it again two nights later. This time he doesn’t wait for Shiro to say anything. He just walks straight to the bed, and Shiro smiles up at him and moves over to make space.

Soon it’s this whole routine, no words necessary, and no matter how often Keith turns up in the middle of the night, Shiro never gets annoyed at being awakened.

Every morning Keith returns to his room before anyone else is up.

 

One night, the sound of Keith’s door sliding open jolts him awake.

Shiro’s there. “I’m sorry,” he begins, but Keith holds up a hand.

“Come here,” he tells Shiro, and Shiro does. Keith’s heart gives a funny little twist, seeing his leader follow his direction.

Shiro sinks down onto the bed next to Keith, a sigh punching out of him. “Thank you, Keith.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Bad dream,” Shiro says. “They took me again. I don’t want—I just needed to see you.”

_I don’t want to be alone_. Keith can fill in the blanks. “Lucky you, you’re seeing me now.”

“Yeah. Lucky me.” There’s a tremor in Shiro’s voice Keith has only heard a few times, whenever phantasms get their claws in Shiro’s cracks and start to pull him apart.

Keith slides his arm around Shiro. He can feel Shiro’s belly rising and falling, his shaky breathing settling under Keith’s hand. Like Keith, and no one else, can cast a spell to calm him. If Shiro turned toward him now, what would he see in Keith’s eyes? Something quiet, and private. Something Keith can almost say aloud—almost.

**Author's Note:**

> • hi i'm in sheith hell and i only know how to cope by writing fic  
> • yes i listened to "Safe and Sound" roughly 4 million times while writing this  
> • come say hi [on tumblr](http://meimagino.tumblr.com)!


End file.
